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The face of beauty is changing. Pageants are making a comeback, but not as we once knew them. Now fans vote online for their favourite contestants; those vying for the crown are savvy about self-promotion; and the events are heavily sponsored, with girls bearing such titles as Miss Teak Construction and Miss Hick Bros Civil.
So it is with the increasingly popular Miss Auckland Beauty Pageant. Around 50 girls lined up to enter last night's event at the city's Crowne Plaza hotel. Director Sarah Smith, who has run the gig for the past three years with her construction industry husband, says they have tried to put a new spin on things.
She remembers watching the Miss New Zealand pageant as a young girl in the east Auckland suburb of Howick. "It was glamorous, the girls were wearing lovely dresses and as a little girlie-girl I was quite interested in that sort of thing."
But now it's not just about the glamour. Smith says they are "empowering young women to market themselves and give them the skill of confidence. We want to show them how to be successful".
Kelly-Ann McHugh, 21, Miss ASIO NZ, is a typical new-breed Miss Auckland contender. The accountancy student says the contest is "all about being beautiful, not sexy", noting that "in today's culture, sexy is about being raunchy, something like Beyonce. Beautiful is more than what you look like on the outside".
She reckons to become Miss Auckland you need to have a good head on your shoulders and have direction in life. Not forgetting "to be respectable".
Pageants are also going back to the old pattern of local businesses sponsoring contestants. Organisers of last night's show say corporate sponsors, such as Fast 4s & Turbos and Foundation Engineering, are jumping at the opportunity to pay $900 to put their name on a girl's sash.
Miss Cerise Lash Extensions, 25-year-old Natasha Sadilek, was the People's Choice this year, as voted by internet users. She is 1.72m and is an importer of goods from Asia. Sadilek's online profile says she enjoys belly-dancing and kick-boxing, and dreams and hopes "to become a national sales manager and continue to develop effective business relationships with China".
But the business of beauty is still an extremely serious one. One hapless contestant was in tears after car trouble made her an hour late. Nerves and excitement prevented another from getting more than two hours' precious beauty sleep the night before, and another declared she had been incapable of eating for hours.
Pageants back in favour
After time out because of feminist protests and bad behaviour, beauty pageants are undergoing a resurgence.
Caroline Daley, an associate professor in Auckland University's department of history told the Herald on Sunday beauty pageants like the Miss New Zealand competition became unfashionable during the 1970s because of the belief that they exploited women.
More recently, contestants in beauty pageants around the world had been stripped of their titles for extra-marital pregnancies and discoveries of x-rated photoshoots, which further undermined the title.
Daley, who lectures on the pageants in papers on social history, said the ideal beauty contestant was always "the girl next door who is pretty but she is nice, she is good and she is wholesome. The beauty pageant girl wants to have world peace".
Regional beauty competitions were also a way for Kiwi girls to "become famous", but with so many ways to achieve celebrity these days, the concept had become redundant.
But things are changing, and Daley pointed out the pageant concept was modernising itself, in line with TV shows such as Next Top Model.
There are even suggestions the events may make it back on to our television screens.
